There are lots of things I would like to do. I would love to learn to speak French properly, rather than sounding like a total div when I attempt it. I would love to give up my caffeine-addict regime of flat whites and vats of builders' brew and be one of those serene green-tea types. I would love to be the sort of woman who has a dry body brushing regime.

And I would also love to wear leather trousers.

However, I have the self-knowledge to realise that none of the above are actually going to happen in the foreseeable future. Learning French? Bearing in mind that I still haven't mastered my eight-times table, this degree of home study seems a stretch. Green tea? Can't stand the stuff. Dry body brushing? Does anyone actually do that?

The wearing of leather trousers is just as unlikely. Frankly, I can't see myself pulling it off. A new survey found they were the most regretted fashion purchase among women, possibly for the same reason I don't own a pair. Appealing as the idea of leather trousers is, the reality is that they won't actually look good on me.

Leather trousers look best on the young and skinny, and people who are young and skinny are drawn to them for this reason. The problem is, people who wish they were younger and skinnier are also drawn to them for this reason, and that's where the trouble starts.

The wearing of leather trousers can be the wardrobe equivalent of the sports car, for those of us of a certain age. Speaking as someone who is approaching a landmark birthday which, ahem, isn't 30, I can vouch for the siren lure of leather trousers. At Paris fashion week recently, I chased a fellow British fashion editor out of the Chanel show because she was wearing really great-looking leather trousers – not too tight or too baggy, a flattering central seam on the thigh – and I wanted to ask where she got them. (They were from Zara. God bless the Brits, wearing Zara to Chanel. Apparently they are about £200.)

Leather trousers are the equivalent of a slogan T-shirt saying "I've Still Got It". (See Gwyneth Paltrow. To be fair, she pulls it off – albeit in a slightly wan, macrobiotic way.)

The brutal truth is we are drawn to leather trousers at precisely the point pulling them off becomes almost impossible. We want what we can't have. It's human nature. Speaking of which, I'm off to Zara.